Just some good, old-fashioned nostalgia

Guys. A few hours ago I finished my last final as an undergraduate. 

I am done. Done!

This is what it looks like when you finish finals. Relief/exhaustion. 

You know, I always thought that I would finish my BYU career kind of like Rocky making it to the top of the Philadelphia Museum of Art stairs. That I would be exhausted but triumphant. And although that is partly how I feel, in all honesty, I feel like this: 

After the most INSANE finals week I have ever had (including a weekend conference to Philly and a freak, violent case of food poisoning and/or stomach flu which took away prime studying time), I don't feel like I ran triumphantly across the finish line. I feel like I collapsed five feet from the end, crawled, and then face-planted it across that line.

But I made it, right? 

Anyway. Since I've finished classes and finals, I've been feeling a bit nostalgic. (It's me. That's what I do when I come to an end of a chapter. I self-reflect and I get all wistful about parking lots and stairways. It's kind of cute, actually.) So today I walked around some of my favorite haunts on campus and remembered. 

That hill. I climbed it way too many times. 

 This has been one of my favorite walkways since freshman year. 

You just never know what you're going to find. Like tea cups hanging from trees. Oh, those artsy art majors. 

 The HFAC. The number of performances I attended here is enormously high. So are the amounts of dates I went to here. 

Whereas the number of dates I went on here is zero. Which is a good thing, because it would be weird to have a date at the Administration Building. 

 The JKB. I had soooooo many classes here. English, Russian, and history classes specifically. (Also, I have a lot of awkward flirting stories from this building. Especially from before the mission. After the mission, too, but especially before. Anyway. Moving on.) 

I have never had a class here. And I am a-ok with that. 

 The Library! Affectionately known as "Harold." Good ol' Harold. So many memories here. 

The JFSB. My second home at Provo. I know this building intimately. I could write an entire personal essay about how much I love this building. But really. Classrooms in the basement, History department on the 2nd floor, German/Russian on the 3rd, and English on the 4th. Love this building. Love this courtyard. The number of hours studying here and meditating here . . . just a good, good place for the soul. 

 Did you know that once upon a time I thought I was going to be a geography major and had a few geography classes in this building? Now you know. 

The Testing Center. Ohhhhhh, the Testing Center. 

 The Writing Fellows Office! A haven in the center of the Testing Center. I like this place. 

 And I like these people. Very much. 

The Maeser Building. Every time I walked into this building, something good happened. A scholarship, a job, and some of the best people I have ever met. The BYU Honors Program is full of incredible, stellar people. 

If you got this far, thanks for taking a trip down memory lane with me. There is so much I could say (and probably will, once I have time to actually think, process, and write), but basically, this place has been good to me. And I honestly can't think of a prettier place to have a university campus. 

It's been real, BYU. 

. . . don't forget me?